King of the Blues Backing Tracks

[Lev]

The Guitar Centre 'King of the Blues' competeition website has some excellent backing tracks to jam over

http://www.gckingoftheblues.com/static_content/view/backing_tracks.html

It's actually a pretty cool web site - any fretters thinking about entering the competition? Not sure about the merits of competion between blues guitarists but I guess it could be fun.

[duhvoodooman]

Cool! I bet we could have some fun here with several of these. The sound quality on the ones I checked out is great....

[stingx]

I ganked them all a while back. A friend pointed them out to me and I too was impressed at the sound quality. There are a few there I plan to work with. Thanks for posting the link for others to enjoy.

[Jimi75]

Thanks for the link Lev.
Great stuff to practice to. What a quality......this will be fun! Can't wait to get home tonight and play.

Let those guys battle for the title of the next big blues thing, I think we lean back and benefit from those sweet tracks.

[jpfeifer]

Hi Lev,

I entered that contest last year at our local Guitar Center. It was a worthwhile event and forced me to practice much harder for several months to get ready for the event. It's kind of like an "American Idol" style contest only for guitar players. You select a backing track and play solo's over it in front of a panel of 3 judges. The competition has several levels (local store, district, regional, and final level) At the more advanced levels they give away some very nice gear. Last year they gave away Les Pauls, 335's, Gibson Acoustic Guitars and lots of other stuff if you made it up to the district level.

They rate you on several aspects including your overall playing and stage presence. It was a little nerve racking but a lot of fun. The other contestants were nice folks and very supportive for the most part.

I would enter it again but not this year. Maybe next year.

-- Jim

[sunvalleylaw]

That's great! Would love to see vid or hear audio of your performance. At the risk of being impolite, how did you fare? :)



Hi Lev,

I entered that contest last year at our local Guitar Center. It was a worthwhile event and forced me to practice much harder for several months to get ready for the event. It's kind of like an "American Idol" style contest only for guitar players. You select a backing track and play solo's over it in front of a panel of 3 judges. The competition has several levels (local store, district, regional, and final level) At the more advanced levels they give away some very nice gear. Last year they gave away Les Pauls, 335's, Gibson Acoustic Guitars and lots of other stuff if you made it up to the district level.

They rate you on several aspects including your overall playing and stage presence. It was a little nerve racking but a lot of fun. The other contestants were nice folks and very supportive for the most part.

I would enter it again but not this year. Maybe next year.

-- Jim

[Justaguyin_nc]

Nice find!! Some nice backings there.. Some talented people there uploading their sounds..
thanks for the link
Look forward to some Fretnet users uploading their takes on these backings.

[jpfeifer]

Hi Sunvalleylaw,

No problem, I don't mind the question.
I actually made it to round 2 at the store competition and lost out there. (almost made it to district level)

It was a bit of a painful experience because I felt that they guy who won at our store competition was not as good of a guitar player as several of us competing that night. He won based on the overall performance package which was high on stage presence, guitar faces, etc. I thought his guitar playing was pretty mediocre (very basic rock guitar riffs). But you never know what the judges are looking for. We had one guy on the panel of judges who was not even a musician, he was a local radio DJ.

I learned a lesson that night, and that would be to focus on the overall performance rather than just focussing on playing well. However, the guys who make do make it to the upper levels of the competition are quite good. At that level they look for originality on top of great playing. Some previous winners at the national level have done some amazing things. They have videos of some of the previous contest winners on Guitar Center's site. However, they don't allow video to be taken at the lower levels of the competition. I wanted to video tape my own performance so that I could look at it later to critique myself, but they wouldn't allow me to film.

In spite of it all, I had a great time doing this event. It's amazing how motivated you can get from a contest like this. That part was worth the whole experience. It forced me to come up with some new licks and even write a new tune and practice like crazy.

-- Jim

[sunvalleylaw]

Thanks Jim. Great story!